BBC 英语学习 News Review 亚马逊水资源出现紧急情况

Amazon River hits its lowest

water levels in over 120 years.

This is news review from BBC Learning English.

I'm Beth, and I'm Phil. Make

sure you watch to the end to learn

the vocabulary that you need to talk

about this story. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel, like this video and try the quiz on our websites.

Now today's story Water levels in the Amazon River are at their lowest since records began, 121 years ago.

It's because of a shortage of rain caused by the natural El Nino effect.

But Brazilian scientists say that climate change is also to blame.

A state of emergency has been declared in Manaus and 20 other cities.

You ve been looking at the headlines.

What's the vocabulary? We have drought, overwhelm and taint.

This is news review from BBC, learning English.

Let's have a look now at our 1st headline.

This is from CNN. Amazon Rivers Falter lowest levels in 121 years amid a severe drought.

This headline says that the Amazon has fallen to its lowest level in 121 years, and this is because of a drought.

Drought is the word we're going to be learning about.

Phil what can you tell us about drought?

OK, so drought is a period of very dry weather, whether is little or no rain, and it can cause problems, things like crops failing or wildfires.

To talk about the situation, we can use it as an uncountable noun, drought, but we can also talk about a drought to talk about a specific period of drought.

Okay? But it's not just used for dry weather.

I've heard this term used in sports, E.G.

Yes. So in football, you could talk about a gold drought, and that's where you have a player who usually scores lots of goals, and they just stopped scoring.

And we use drought here because in the same way that water stops flowing, so the gulls have stopped flowing.

And one more thing to note about drought is that the pronunciation and the spelling are quite different.

So we spell it D-R-O-U-G-H-T, but it's pronounced drought.

Okay, let's look at that again.

Let's have a look at our next headline.

This is from The Times Forest Fires threatened to overwhelm the Amazon Basin.

The headline says that There are forest fires in the Amazon Basin.

That's because the drought is making everything dry.

Now, the word we're interested in is the verb overwhelm.

This has lots of different meanings fill but it's quite litual here, isn't it?

Yes it is. The forest fires could suddenly and completely cover the area.

They could overwhelm it. Um. But we cannot use it in different ways as well.

Yes, we can use overwhelm to talk about work or emotions, can't we?

Can you give us some other examples?

Yes. So we can use it as a passive or we can use it as an adjective.

So if, e.g. you say that you're overwhelmed with work, it means you've got too much and you can't cope with um.

If you watch a film that's very emotional, you could say it's overwhelming If it makes you cry a lot.

Well, hopefully this episode of News review hasn't overwhelmed you, although feel your presenting has been very moving.

Okay, let's look at that again.

Next headline, please. This is from Voa.

Wildfire smoke taint air for millions in Brazil.

So we've already heard that the drought in the Amazon has led to wildfires.

This headline says that the smoke from the fire taints the air, and we are looking at the word taint.

Now, phil, doesn't this mean turning something good?

That yes, the smoke taints the air, and we don't want smoke in the air.

We can use it more generally to talk about turning something good into something bad.

And actually we often use it by turning it into the adjective tainted.

That's right. And other things can be tainted,

like you said, e.g. a relationship.

Maybe someone in a relationship does a bad thing, the other person can't trust them, so the

relationship is ruined, it's tainted. We can also use it to talk about people's reputations.

Think of a politician caught up in a scandal.

It content

their reputation with public.

OK, let's look at that again.

We ve had drought a period of time with no rain overwhelm, cover something completely and quickly, and taints turns something good to bad.

Now, if you're interested in the Amazon, we've got another episode of News Review that we think you're really like.

Click on it now. And don't forget to click here to subscribe to our channel, so you never ms.

another video. Thanks for joining us.

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